Warsaw, day 1

As I mentioned in a recent posting, it's always a little disorienting (or disorientating, if you will) to land in a strange, new place. I had lined up a taxi ride from the airport to the hotel the night I arrived, and the hotel was very nice, so everything went fine the first night other than the fact that even though the hotel desk clerk spoke English, her accent was so heavy that I could only understand about half of what she was saying. I just smiled and agreed with everything she said and hoped that I hadn't agreed to anything too crazy.

The next day, I started with a visit to the Palace of Culture and Science. This is an interesting building. It was a "gift" from Stalin to the people of Warsaw. To them, though, it was a constant reminder that Big Brother was watching. One Polish guide book said that the building looks like something out of "Ghostbusters." Judge for yourself.



But it had a nice view from the top:



After I finished with that, I tried to go to the National Museum. Hah! The joke was on me. Even though it was supposed to open at 10, I found a sign saying that it wouldn't open until noon. (This was after I had walked quite a distance to get there.) So I walked another long distance to get to Łazienki Park. I suppose you could think of this as the Warsaw version of Central Park. It's a nice oasis in the middle of the city with lots of ponds, trees, and a few cool buildings.

Chopin is to the Polish what Sibelius is to the Finnish--their best-known composer and a national hero. There's a Chopin monument in the Park.



After that, I made it back to the National Museum. I didn't take any pictures, but it was interesting to see lots of Polish artwork and other aspects of Polish history.

My next stop (after much more walking) was the Warsaw Uprising Museum. The Warsaw Uprising was one of the aspects of my visit that interested me the most. Again, this wasn't the kind of experience that merits much picture-taking, but it was a very interesting visit. The defeat of the Warsaw Uprising is still a scar on the Polish psyche, sort of the Polish version of September 11. You can hear about all kinds of heroic and terrible experiences. In some ways, it was as brutal as the concentration camps.

There was still plenty of time left in the day, so I took a short bus tour of Warsaw. After that, I wrapped up with the dinner that I described in my earlier posting. After all of that walking, my legs were shot. Whew! By day 2, though, I'd figured out much more about the Warsaw public transportation system.

There's lots more to come in future postings. There's another day of Warsaw, the trip to London, my trip to Lugano, my trip to Zermatt and the Glacier Express, and a day I spent taking pictures around Zug.

Apparently, I was a little tired

Last night, I did something I haven't done since I was probably two years old: I slept for 13 hours. Keep in mind that this is from a guy who, once in a while, manages to get a whole seven hours of sleep and considers that to be a great night.

I'm not sure where it came from. I only got about five hours of sleep in Rochester on Wednesday night, but that's usually not enough to do me in. My trip from Rochester to Zurich was a little crazy (I got rerouted a bit frantically from Rochester to Detroit to Paris to Zurich, with two of the flights being held for me with the PA system repeatedly telling the entire Detroit Airport "Ethan Wood, last call for Mr. Ethan Wood, please report to Gate A60 immediately, flight is closing"), but that doesn't really explain it, either. I only dozed for about an hour on the overseas flight on Thursday night, but that's par for the course when I'm in coach.

Maybe my whole life finally caught up with me. I tried to stay up until 10:30 after arriving home to get myself back on schedule, but I gave up at 9:30. I woke up briefly at 1:00 a.m. because I was hot, but then I fell back asleep until 8:30 and didn't really become conscious until 10:30. I was astonished. This morning, I tried to interpret a reminder that I had written to myself right before I went to bed last night, but I couldn't understand what I had tried to tell myself. I think I was pretty wasted.

I feel much better tonight; in fact, it's 11:30, and I don't feel a bit tired. It looks like it's going to take a while for my internal clock to readjust this time. In the meantime, I'm heading back to Zermatt (think Matterhorn) after church tomorrow so that I can ride the Glacier Express from Zermatt to St. Moritz on Monday. As the name implies, it's an eight-hour train ride through glacier-covered Alps. Should be pretty cool. I have lots of pictures to post: London, Warsaw, and more. I need to get working on that.

Travel

Here's an excerpt from an article in the New York Times that describes exactly how I feel when I first arrive at a new, strange place:

"For any traveler, the first day in a strange place can be stressful. Just like everyone else, I suffer regularly from what I call 24-TDD: 24-hour Temporary Distress and Disorientation. In layman’s terms: the first day in almost every new place usually stinks. You arrive and think you’ve made a terrible mistake: it’s too touristy, it’s not touristy enough, it’s boring, it’s ugly, you didn’t do enough research, your research is terrible. You’re tired, lost, hungry, cold (or hot), feeling woozy.
. . . .

". . . [A]fter a rough 24 hours, things magically turn around. The city starts to seem familiar. The public transit system becomes old hat, a great free map is found, landmarks are recognized, both famous (the Louvre again, just where I knew it would be) and less so (ah, the sandwich shop with the old wooden seats means my hostel is up the next block)."

That's my experience exactly! When I get to a new place, I spend the first few hours convinced that I've made a mistake. I'm disoriented, I'm tired, I can't figure things out, and I start trying to figure out how to endure the days until I can go home. But I've learned that if I just give it some time, things will turn around, and I'll end up loving it. I experienced this the most strongly in Warsaw and Tromsø, but it happens to some degree everywhere I go. In the end, I haven't ever left a place regretting that I'd made the trip.

I [heart] jet lag

Hello from the penthouse suite at the Country Inn and Suites in Eagan, Minnesota.

I hate the first morning after coming back to the States. I went to bed at 11:00 last night, which meant that I'd been up for 23 hours. I fell asleep right away. Then came that magical moment during the night when I woke up. Reluctantly, I turned to look at the clock, hoping that it was no earlier than 4:30. Nope. It was 3:00 in the morning. I dozed off for the next hour and a half, but now I'm up. The good news is that I shouldn't have much competition in the fitness room when I head down there in a minute.

Random coolness

One of the fun things about traveling, or at least being in a new place, is that you never quite know what's going to happen.

1. Just as I was sitting down at the computer a little while ago to check on my flights for tomorrow, I heard some very loud airplane engines outside the window. I didn't think much about it at first, but it kept happening. I finally went out on the terrace to see what was happening. I was treated to a half-hour airshow with nine planes out over Lake Zug. They were doing loops, skimming the water, flying in formation, diving, climbing, all kinds of cool things. I have no idea why that happened, but it was cool to see.

2. I haven't started my detailed Warsaw report yet, but I'll share one thing. The last night I was there in Warsaw's old town, a bunch of Poles started walking in one direction. I figured there must be something going on, although I had no idea what it could be. No one around me spoke enough English to tell me. So I just went with the crowd. We ended up at a wall overlooking a huge, grassy bowl with a large fountain in the middle. There must have been thousands of people sitting in the bowl. When it got dark enough, we were treated to a laser show with the fountain as a backdrop. There were all sorts of colored lights in the fountain, and they would use the spray from the fountain as a projection screen for the lasers and pictures that they wanted to show. Awesome. They just don't do things like that in Lakeville.

A couple of other random thoughts: First, it's hard to hear about what happened in Oslo. I loved being there last summer. I had walked around in the part of town where the bombing took place. It feels a little more personal when it happens in a place I've actually seen, like when the World Trade Center was hit or the freeway bridge in Minneapolis collapsed. Those places mean something to me; they aren't just pictures on the news from some faraway land.

Shifting gears, Delta Airlines and I are going to be spending lots of quality time together over the next three weeks, starting tomorrow. I'll be in Minneapolis for work, Chicago to visit Jed, Utah to visit family, San Francisco for work, back to Utah, Rochster (NY) for work, and then back to Switzerland. Ugh. Anyone want to bet that my luggage will have trouble keeping up with me?

Poland is not Norway

Not surprisingly, I enjoyed my trip to Warsaw. As the title of this post implies, it was quite a different experience from last summer's travels around Norway. I'll have pictures and a detailed account later, but here are a couple of quick points in no particular order.

First, they don't speak much English in Poland. I didn't have much luck speaking with people there. (I tried German a couple of times, but that didn't get me very far. I suspect that the reason for that goes back about 65 or 70 years.)

Second, as I said a couple of times in earlier posts, I could not believe how inexpensive everything was. For $80 a night, I stayed at the Westin. The quality was at about the same level as the Sheraton in New York City, which cost $270 per night. If you're looking for a cheap vacation, I strongly suggest Warsaw.

Knowing that I didn't need nearly as much money as I had needed in Norway, I started the trip by withdrawing the equivalent of $200 (580 Polish zloty). That money was to cover museums, tours, meals, public transportation, and anything else other than the hotel and the cab ride from the airport, which were prepaid. (I took a cab from the airport when I landed because I got in late at night and didn't want to try to figure out Warsaw's public transportation system in the middle of the night. I did take the bus back to the airport, though. More about that later.)

I couldn't spend the money. Try as I might, I could not figure out how to spend 580 zloty. I didn't hold back; if I wanted to visit a museum, I visited the museum. If I wanted to take a tour, I took the tour. It didn't help that I sometimes grabbed things on the run because I didn't always want to stop to eat. Breakfast and lunch on Friday, which consisted of a muffin, a sandwich, and a Coke, cost me $6.50 altogether. I started tipping outrageously, but even that didn't do the trick. By dinner on Friday, I knew I was in trouble. I ate at a nice restaurant. I accepted everything they offered. A side of grilled vegetables? Another Sprite? Dessert? Yes, yes, and yes. The grand total, including tip, was about $45.

By Sunday morning when I left, I still had way too much money. I usually don't eat a big breakfast, but that morning, I had room service bring me the best breakfast money could buy. At the airport, I bought a couple of souvenirs for the kids along with a giant Toblerone bar (because good chocolate is so hard to find here in Switzerland). That finally did it. I brought home a couple of Polish bills and coins to give the kids. Whew!

Third, it can sometimes be helpful to have a flight cancelled. How so? To get a cheaper flight, I had booked my itinerary through Amsterdam with KLM rather than directly to Warsaw with Swiss or Lot, the Polish airline. When I got to the airport in Zurich, my flight to Amsterdam was going to be delayed for a couple of hours. Because I would have missed my connecting flight to Warsaw, KLM put me on the next Lot flight direct to Warsaw, which is what I wanted in the first place. Not bad.

Chillingly, though, while I was on my way back through Amsterdam, I just happened to notice that one of the flights to Minneapolis, the flight that I'll be taking in a few days, was delayed by at least five hours. Ugh. I hope I can avoid a replay of the fun experience that Stace and the kids had on their way to Utah.

Off to Poland

I'm headed for Warsaw tomorrow. I just can't get over how cheap everything is. I can get a cab from the airport to my hotel for twenty bucks. My hotel, which is supposed to be really nice (but we'll see what that means by Eastern European standards), is $80 per night. If the food is as inexpensive as everything else, I might never stop eating.

Everything I read, though, tells me to watch out for pickpockets. Anywhere in Europe, and even at train stations in Switzerland, I just make the assumption that someone's trying to get their hands on my wallet, so I'm fairly vigilant about it. I'm going to be extra careful this time.